Bodybuilders are always on show.  Their work literally lives on them as they navigate the world with a unique and dedicated lifestyle. On stage as they bare it all, hard lights emphasize their slick, oiled mussels, sculpted and intimidating. Here we have American Standard, a photo series by Matthew DeFeo that documents the behind-the-scenes life of bodybuilders as they train to compete. And while I don’t necessarily believe that these bodybuilders have fully relaxed in front of the camera, ceasing to perform, I do believe that DeFeo’s photographs have given a softer touch to one of our more shocking sports.

The first time Harf Zimmermann visited East Berlin’s Hufelandstrasse neighborhood, he sensed it was unlike any other neighborhood he’d known in East Germany. Linden trees lined the streets, as did many privately-owned shops, an unusual sight in a socialist state.

Michelle Van Parys is a beacon in our photographic community here in South Carolina. To say Michelle is hardworking would be an understatement. She built the photo program twenty years ago at the College of Charleston, hired the leading darkroom architect to outfit a workspace for her students, and continues to run her own show all the while making work, publishing and teaching.

Although we have yet to meet in person, I feel in some ways I know John Lusk Hathaway by the kind of images he makes—down to earth and honest.

For five years now John Lusk Hathaway has been traversing the low country in South Carolina, making connections, driving back roads, taking his time with folks, sometimes with a camera and sometimes without. All the while gaining trust and listening to stories so he can make pictures. It is no wonder his perspective makes us feel we are both a part of while at the same time acknowledging we are not from.

Adriana Loureiro Fernández’s images of the protests and street clashes in Venezuela are dark — masked figures emerging from shadows, backlit by flames or wrapped in swirls of tear gas. People flash a gun or a knife, or show off stones that would soon be launched at police. She gets up close, which is bold considering she once had a fear of crowds. Still, she has gotten used to pushing herself, physically and emotionally, as she witnesses the political chaos that continues to upend her homeland.

In 2008, French photographer Antoine Bruy spent a year in Australia. When he returned home, he planned to bring with him more than a hundred rolls of film. All of them were lost. “Since then, I kept thinking of going back, to do something about this place,” the artist says.

The images were etched in photographer Nick Otto’s mind as he recently traveled to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Desaturated and monochrome images of war and destruction from the 1990s. The siege of Sarajevo had been the longest siege of a major city in modern warfare. San Francisco-based Otto aimed to tell the story of a city still mired in a long recovery from the fog of war, with high unemployment and a lagging economy. However, when he got on the ground and started working, a different picture began to emerge.

A woman bundles up behind a jumble of mismatched chairs. A man at a table leans into his palm. A veiled woman averts her eyes as she steps into the light. Some of these photos are sentences, others phrases, and still others seem to be straight out of a Joseph Brodsky poem. For Igor Posner, they represent the “half-seen, half-recollected” return to his hometown — St. Petersburg — where he had not been since coming to America as a 20-year-old Jewish refugee in the early 1990s.

Visual activist photographer Zanele Muholi has her first solo exhibition opening this month at the East London gallery Autograph ABP. For more than a decade, she has focused on documenting black LGTBQI people in South Africa. Her ongoing portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama was inspired by her experiences on the road and the socio-political events she encountered along the way. Using her body as a canvas, her psychologically driven portraits confront the politics of race and representation.